


support

by damnspacebois (Race_Jackson23)



Series: back to the future but voltron and absolutely nothing like back to the future because i've never seen it [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Chronic Illness, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 18:03:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16164059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Race_Jackson23/pseuds/damnspacebois
Summary: He can’t stop tapping his foot.It must be driving Keith insane, but his husband hasn’t told him off. He hasn’t said anything since they’d reached the office and the nurse went to retrieve the doctor, in fact. Instead, they sit together in silence. Gripping Shiro’s hand that little bit tighter as the seconds go past, Keith just stares straight ahead at the framed certificates boasting of Dr Hendrick’s mastery, and Shiro copies him in attempt to settle the nervous churning of his stomach.Tap-tap-tapgoes his foot. And he can’t stop it.Shiro and Keith learn that although the clone body cured Shiro's illness, it didn't stop their children from inheriting it.





	support

**Author's Note:**

> uh...sorry. but ena [@captainsflyboy](https://http://captainsflyboy.tumblr.com/) made me do it. 
> 
> trigger warnings for discussion of chronic and terminal illnesses.

He can’t stop tapping his foot.

It must be driving Keith insane, but his husband hasn’t told him off. He hasn’t said anything since they’d reached the office and the nurse went to retrieve the doctor, in fact. Instead, they sit together in silence. Gripping Shiro’s hand that little bit tighter as the seconds go past, Keith just stares straight ahead at the framed certificates boasting of Dr Hendrick’s mastery, and Shiro copies him in attempt to settle the nervous churning of his stomach.

 _Tap-tap-tap_ goes his foot. And he can’t stop it.

Strangely enough, it reminds him of his childhood. Of being a scared ten-year-old sitting between his parents as another doctor – not Hendrick’s, but one similarly masterful, of course – discusses _treatment plans_ and _timeframes_ and _experimental procedures_ , as if any of that could combat the fact that Shiro’s body was betraying him. His father had had a similar tick when he was nervous. The tap-tap-tapping had driven them all mad, but his father had been unable to control it; at one point, his mother had snapped at him for it, but it did little good. Snapping rarely did, especially back then when they were getting used to the idea that Shiro wouldn’t make it past thirty.

But the tap-tap-tapping never really went away. Even as parents passed, Shiro seemed to absorb that nervous tick, no matter how he willed it away. It had driven past boyfriends insane, though Keith had never said anything of it, not even in the worst of times.

Not even when they were waiting to hear if Shiro had passed on his defective genes to their son.

“Hey,” Keith says suddenly, surprising Shiro enough that his foot pauses momentarily in its attempt to drill a hole into the floor. Keith is watching him, eyes soft as he squeezes his hand. “Hey, whatever they say, we’ll get through this, ok?”

Shiro’s mouth is dry but he nods. It feels like a lie, though, and not one he can keep up for long.

“I just … I’m just worried, you know?” As Keith nods and squeezes his hand again, the words just start tumbling out in a rush. “What if he’s got it? What if I’ve done this to him? He’s our little boy, Keith, I love him so much, but what if I was wrong? What if he’s going to suffer because I was so selfish?”

Keith says nothing. Like always, though, he needn’t give voice to his thoughts for Shiro to understand him. He thinks Shiro is overreacting, that it isn’t his fault somehow, but this time, he’s wrong.

It’s Shiro’s disease in question here. Even if it no longer threatens his life, it’s the same one that had him in a similar doctor’s office at age ten, staring down a diagnosis that could have ended his life and dreams, and to hear that he’d passed that onto his son? It’d be too much to bear.

“I _knew_ we shouldn’t have done it,” he continues, his voice wavering, “but I convinced myself–”

“Stop it,” commands Keith in a tone that brokers no argument.

His eyes are intent, flinty, and Shiro flinches instinctively. He looks as if he’ll fight Shiro right there in that office. Then his eyes soften, the hard line of his mouth all but disappearing as he squeezes Shiro’s hand for what feels like the fiftieth time that day.

“Stop it,” he repeats. He grips Shiro’s hand tighter. “We made the decision to have children together. You didn’t ‘convince yourself’ or whatever bullshit you’re trying to shoulder, _we_ decided that we wanted to have kids. This isn’t on you, we’re in this together, ok? We’re a team.”

Shiro nods, throat constricting uncomfortably, but Keith continues with barely a pause.

“And if it turns out that Akira has it–” And as he pauses, Keith looks sick for the first time, and Shiro wonders how much he’s holding back to be strong for his husband. Shiro’s heart swells with affection. “Well, we’ll get through it. Together.”

That’s when the tears finally come.

“I’m sorry,” he blubbers as Keith pulls him to his chest and hushes him. “I’m sorry, I’m always crying these days, I just can’t help it.”

“It’s ok, baby,” Keith murmurs into his hair, and that sets off a new round of tears. He nuzzles him, and murmurs over the tears, “Let it out, baby, its ok. It’s ok to cry.”

“All I do is cry!” he all but howls. “Our kid could be dying and the only thing I can do about it is cry like a lunatic!”

“Hey-hey-hey, it’s ok, baby, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

They sit like that for a while, Shiro’s head against Keith’s chest while the latter rubs soft circles on his back. It’s longer than it should be, actually, so either the nurse couldn’t find Hendrick or Hendrick is giving them room to work through their issues, but either way, it takes Shiro a long time to pull away and compose himself.

“You ok to deal with this?” Keith asks, eyeing Shiro with concern as he wipes his eyes. “I could stay and hear what he says while you wait in the car if you’d like?”

“No,” says Shiro, hating the way his voice trembles. He clears his throat. “No, I can do this. As long as you’re with me, I can do anything.”

“Always,” Keith says with a fond smile marred by the pain in his eyes.

Then he’s nodding to the door and Hendrick is striding into the room, shrugging off his jacket as he takes a seat. Shiro only has eyes for the papers in his hands, a whole stack of them. His heart leaps into his throat. He knows that if the news was good, there would be no need for so many papers.

Hendrick smiles at them, an awkward thing that looks more like he’s in pain than anything else. That, more than anything, sets Shiro’s heart plummeting from high in his throat to the bottom of his shoes because that’s not the smile of a man about to tell them happy news. Keith must know it too because the grip on Shiro’s hand becomes unbearably tight.

“Shiro, Keith, good to see you again,” Hendrick says, then seems to realise what he’s said because he hastily adds, “though I wish it were under better circumstances. How is Yumiko doing? Still wanting to be an astronaut like her dads?”

“Actually, she wants to be a diplomat like her Uncle Hunk now,” Shiro replies, and though he knows that he’s just avoiding the subject at hand, he latches onto the opportunity to talk about his oldest like a man grasping at straws. “She’s convinced she’s going to go to the Academy on New Altea and learn how to be the best negotiator in the galaxy.”

“You must be very proud,” says Hendrick, that sad smile still on his lips.

As Shiro falters, his husband taps his thumb on the outside of his hand and says, “We are.”

“That’s good,” says Hendrick, and there’s a pause where he shuffles the papers. Both Shiro and Keith’s eyes to drawn to them once again and Hendrick notices, his mouth tightening into a line. “Ok, well, we should get started. We’ve got a lot to get through today. I’ve booked out my afternoon, so we’ve got time to go over it all.”

And with that, Shiro’s universe crashes down once again.

It’s come down before, of course, more than once. That first time when he was ten; the day his parents died and he needed to move to the US to stay with his aunt and grandfather; the day the Kerberos trip went wrong. So many times after that too, like when he died and was sucked into the Black Lion’s consciousness. When he thought Keith had died. When they had Yumiko tested for his illness and he thought for a split second that she’d had it.

Shiro is so used to his universe falling apart that when it happens this time, he’s on autopilot. He asks question after question, talks new procedures that hadn’t been available when he was a kid, and the prognosis is good. Better than his had been. If there was one thing he could thank the Galra invasion for, apparently, it was that Earth medicine had benefitted from it. With the Altean knowledge shared by Coran and Allura and Olkari tech, they were in a much better position to fight it than they had been before, though he’d give anything for that to not be the case.

He knows he isn’t alone in this. From the corner of his eye, Shiro watches as Keith sits attentively, listening to the conversation but never interrupting its flow. He is as silent as ever, his tightening grip on Shiro’s hand and the paleness of his face the only indication of his thoughts, and if Shiro’s hand wasn’t basically dead from lack of blood flow, he’d squeeze his hand right back in support. His husband has been through so much for him that it feels wrong he can’t do more to comfort him, but it’s because they’ve been through it together that he knows his presence is enough to calm Keith’s anxieties.

It won’t end with this meeting, he knows. It probably won’t ever end. The only reason it had in his case, the only reason he’d even made it to that day to have this conversation, was pure (bad?good?) luck and a swap into a cloned body. From now on, Akira’s life, and theirs by extension, will be doctor’s visits and hospital stays, and Shiro, better than anybody, knows the strain that puts on a family, even one as supportive as theirs.

But they’ll power through it, he thinks to himself as they leave with heavy hearts and a mountain of information booklets. They’ll make it, he knows, and it’s because of what he told Keith before. Even with this tearing him up inside, with Keith by his side, he can face anything.

And as he sits in the passenger seat on the way home, his foot doesn’t even tap once.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah. sorry.


End file.
